Admittedly, the title of this post has less to do with the subject matter than I desire to shoehorn a cute title into most of the things I do. But I have been meditating on the nature of art recently, most especially because of a piece by Michael Helms, which you cannot see here, because the powers that be here at DA saw fit to remove it. Said work was judged to have artistic merit incommensurate with the controversy, potential or manifest, that attended upon it's subject matter, so it had to go. I was fond of the work, which I found beautiful and thought-provoking, and in keeping with the highest traditions of good art, so naturally I was disappointed. But what got me thinking was not that DA management disagreed with me -- for all I know they do not -- but that they decided that this particular artwork was not worth supporting or defending, no matter what they thought of its esthetic value. What was, or could be, behind such a decision? The trivial answer must allow for purely personal reasons such as individual taste, personal pique, too much coffee or not enough, having a less than stellar day. But allow me to pose the question in the abstract, and consider it corporately and not merely individually. And to do that, I should start with the concept of Art itself; what it is, and where it comes from.

Considering what Art is, we must confront the fact that if it could be precisely defined in words, it would not need to exist. Art and language would then be purely redundant and whether we resorted to one or the other would turn or mechanical considerations like efficiency or semantic clarity. But it does not, because Art [in which I include visual, musical, dance etc] exists to communicate concepts and feelings for which language is insufficient; each exists in relation to and overlapping with the other but each has a purpose which is largely its own, and each is defined on its own terms, the expression of which in other forms is at best a palimpsest.

Considering where Art comes from: individually, it occupies the liminal space between imagination, reality, and talent. Socially, it occupies the liminal space between the artist, the perceiver, and the society that both inhabit. Inherent in the creation of Art is tension: the individual tension between the artist's perception of reality, their imagination, and their ability to express via their craft; the social tension between the artist, their audience, and the larger community. Fundamental to the purpose of Art is communication; to be Art, art must be shared and sharable.

Thus the concept of what Art is, along with the art itself, arises not just from the artist but, as importantly, from the social fabric of the society the artist inhabits. Art is supported and informed by the complex weave of shared concepts, symbols, ideals, mores, modes, beliefs, traditions, and worldview that define and circumscribe a society. Good art reaches us, moves and challenges us, on its own terms through the shared social constructs that connect us with the artist. Bad (or at least inadequate) art requires documentation: copious notes to explain what it means, how we should feel about it, and why it matters. (As a rule, if someone has to explain why an artwork matters, it probably doesn't. This is of course is distinct from helping people develop a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, Art.) Ugly art sets out to offend, which is the easiest, least constructive, and most puerile purpose art can descend to.

Thus, to extent that the definition of Art is thought to be held only by the individual and not also by the social consciousness, it loses it's ability to motivate, challenge, or transform. Not only does the idea that "art is whatever I say it is" absolve the artist of trying to communicate with us, it absolves us from trying to listen or perceive. Taken to the extreme, the individualist view in effect converts all art into "bad" art. Or to put it another way: if everything can be art, nothing is art.

Two conclusions are therefore apparent: first, bureaucracies, which are all about rules (expressed in language), cannot define or judge what is Art and what is not; they can only circumscribe its content. Second, the notion that "art is whatever I say it is" is both insufficient and incorrect because it denies the social aspect and therefore amputates both the necessary tension for Art's creation and context for it's expression.

This matters because together these forces undermine and fragment a society's concept of what constitutes Art, and when a society begins to lose its shared, inhered concept of what Art is, it tends to resort to bureaucratic solutions. As a result, art itself tends to become bureaucratized. The bureaucratized approach to Art cannot support good art or defend us from ugly art but treats all art as if it were bad, slathering an egalitarian gloss over all and lubricating Art's descent to the lowest common denominator.

This is not just a matter of creating a great deal of saccharine "popular" art. In effect, this process decapitates the art world and changes the essential dynamic between the artist and his audience. Impelled by the need to communicate but cast loose the social weave that would allow them to do so effectively, all too many artists, all too much of the time, in the name of "artistic freedom" resort to the one thing that will always get through: Ugly. To shock, to offend, to be controversial or "transgressive" becomes not a means to an end, but an end in itself. (N.B.: Artistic freedom, properly understood, is the freedom to express oneself to engage and challenge society, not to ignore it or treat it as irrelevant or offend it for the sake of offending it.)

Such antics inevitably provoke a bureaucratic response, but bureaucrats can no more define the limits of what is offensive than they can define what is Art. Inherent in the individualist mindset is not only the right to offend, but the right to be offended -- by anything, at any time. So bureaucracies, like the one here at DA, are constantly buffeted by people asserting their right to be offended.

And therein lies the rub. In any society there are those who are tolerant, open-minded, and polite and those who are the opposite. In the willy-nilly-anything-goes view of the world, the former tend to act as individuals while the latter act as a collective. They act as a collective not much because they are organized (though they may be), but because they make a great deal of noise and this noise is focused on the bureaucracies that control whatever it is that they are making noise about. The polite and tolerant act as individuals because the primacy of individuality denies them the sanction to criticize the rude or intolerant (whose opinions are accorded the courtesy of being treated as equally valid); or if they do, to do so in the same terms and by the same methods as their opponents. Such contests inevitably devolve to seeing who has the loudest bullhorns (sometimes literally) and everyone involved leaves deaf.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has the choice of listening to everyone (and letting the noise escalate), listening to no one (and telling everyone to shut up), or making up their own rules and that's generally what they do. Of course, such rules can neither be effectively stated or applied because of the fundamental mismatch between Art and language, and unfortunately the only metric readily available to judge their efficacy is the perceived noise level. Thus, any set of bureaucratic rules will inherently focus more on placating the offended than defending the tolerant. Further, the reactive nature of the bureaucracy ensures that, noise being what it is, a consistent or "fair" application of the rules will produce results that reflect the nonsensical and chaotic nature of the input. Thus do perfectly good and defensible artworks get banned one day but not the next, or when they are exhibited by some but not others.

But that is not what worries me. Art is a higher form of communication and its bureaucratization acts, I think, as a canary in a coal mine. When decisions about Art become wholly bureaucratic, society has lost its ability to recognize what Art is, and so communicate with it. When a society loses its ability to communicate through Art, it is because its members are so alienated from each other that they lack a common ground on which to meet. In effect, the social weave has frayed to the point where Art can no longer be supported -- it falls through. I fear that not long after, we all fall through with it.

C. Owen Johnson
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